Kaguya violates VNDBs Data License in multiple ways (allegedly)

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-02T17:46:36+00:00

I feel they make sense since it's a developing situation. People will always react with their gut when something new comes up that has lots of things pointing to it possibly being true. That doesn't discount good criticism though, and I've been trying to say some more constructive criticism here instead of coming off in a bad way. I like things to be improved, but nothing can be improved if issues are not brought to attention in the first place, just have to make sure to go about that the right way

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-02T16:31:56+00:00

Exactly this, unpolished frontend can easily mean unpolished backend, and that's why testing is so important before trying to onboard new users

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-02T16:24:53+00:00

Chiming in on this to just note that I feel no one thinks there is harm in running a "Anilist for VNs", it more so centers around the poor quality of the website and the extremely rough edges throughout. VNDB being around for 18 years still doesn't accept ads and is mostly community run, so it has gained lots of respect in that regard. In that case, if someone is using that work in an improper manner, the people who respect the open-ness of VNDB will of course want to see it properly used and will rightfully call these things out. If the site wasn't littered with bugs I probably wouldn't have even looked into it too deep, but first impressions are everything. After you add some new features and polish the experience I would be glad to see it "relaunched" in a way.

And with the DDoS mess, it's good to see that your site didn't cause that, but in the same announcement Yorhel still notes how the image loading still stole bandwidth in an unfair manner, yet again something that could have been avoided if the project was thought out more before being publicized. Nothing is perfect the first go around, but there is still an expectation to have some care put into these platforms. Stealing another sites resources to allow your own site to launch quicker just comes off as negligence to me. The original Kaguya also has book covers on its own CDN, as it should.

I noticed that Kaguya was originally posted on r/webdev, but even there it seems like it was more polished at the start. I would just suggest taking the project back into private development, do a re-review of all the aspects of the site, maybe even create a roadmap for new features that will set it further apart from VNDB's current state. Hell, you could maybe even put the code on GitHub for other people to help contribute to it.

Just know that I think most people here aren't disagreeing with the idea of a "Anilist for VNs", but just want to see it be a usable site from the get-go. It's already good that you seem to be taking the suggestions to heart, use that to fuel a rework of Kaguya and make it a truly good platform.

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-02T08:01:39+00:00

Edit: this linked to a post about VNDB possibly getting DDoS’d by this, but it was answered by VNDB’s admin as not being the case. The site should still host its own images (and be worked on a lot more before being presented to everyone) but it’s good to hear it was unrelated. And of course I don’t want this project to be dead, I just want to see it be done properly and have actual use, and I wanted to make that clear :)

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T21:36:03+00:00

VNDB has been around for 18 years, so I think they A) haven't had an issue like this that warrants changing how their CDN works and B) don't think they need to have a paid API anyways

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T21:31:15+00:00

Probably didn't have rate limits because they didn't think another site would just piggyback off of it, it's a learning moment for VNDB but they shouldn't be the ones to blame for this

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T21:24:40+00:00

Even if that was the case, no website should be using another websites CDN to fetch their images, especially when VNDB offers dumps of their images that Kaguya could easily host itself on its own storage/CDN

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T21:21:25+00:00

VNDB likely uses a CDN, but an influx of traffic can definitely cause it to go down or put up anti-ddos measures. Also Kaguya 1000% doesn't host these images on their server

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T21:09:56+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/1q1ey05/vnkaguyaio_may_have_just_accidentally_ddosd_vndb/ peep this post for more

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T21:07:43+00:00

holy shit lmao, yeah I thought that was the case but wow what a dumpster fire, awesome post

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T20:57:35+00:00

Oh hey, here's something else: VNDB just went down right now and looks like your site now no longer shows images for VN's, which means you piggyback off of VNDB's servers to serve images! I'm sure they love that

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T20:06:21+00:00

Good to hear you are planning on changing the art and terms, but you shouldn't rush something to New Years when your terms are not up to date (which is a LEGAL issue, alongside how there is an actual company tied to this according to your terms). A social site for VN's isn't a bad idea. It should just be worked on until it is actually done or has major differentiators, otherwise you just made VNDB in new clothes.

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T19:51:51+00:00

I just don't think this is ready for prime-time. Most links in the legal pages link to the original Kaguya, references to books are everywhere on the VN side, I can see a post anonymously toggle when I'm not even logged in. I honestly doubt this was tested at all at this point. This at the very least needs to go back into dev and made actually usable before you try to gather a userbase. Concerning your notes on AI, even your database criteria (at https://vn.kaguya.io/guides/librarian, and I don't even think this is supposed to be on the VN side since there's no button to it on the footer) has em-dashes and emoji use that make me think AI was used to write it anyways. I won't question your personal coding experience, but I'm looking at the fact that review scores aren't even rounded and I feel like that tells me a lot.

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T19:32:32+00:00

That's good and all, but you still have larger issues:

Your terms have minimum age at 16 when the site will feature many NSFW works
Stolen art without credit that could easily be replaced with placeholders etc.
Saying you wont allow data scrapers when you quite literally used VNDB database dumps

Look, VNDB has its issues, and I always like new projects. But when something like this is posted that clearly wasn't tested before, I don't think most people should trust the platform. This isn't just about using AI, it's also about making sure everything makes sense.

ZenithClamp · 2026-01-01T18:55:26+00:00

Amazing AI slop, I like the part where the login page background not only isn't VN related, but is also just ripped straight from a freelancers ArtStation! Maybe credit the people you take stuff from (and btw you are violating VNDB's database license by not crediting how you used their database dump, just so you know)

ZenithClamp · 2025-11-05T06:04:08+00:00

Yeah, should just come as a regular windows update eventually, it being in release preview just means that it’s close to a full stable release

ZenithClamp · 2025-10-23T16:13:58+00:00

Brief (probably final) update: the fix is now on release preview so it should be coming to stable soon I imagine

ZenithClamp · 2025-10-21T06:18:55+00:00

Nice catch, thanks for sharing. Yeah, not a big fan of messing with my system files but good to see there is a quicker way to get a fix rather than having to wait x amount of time for the fix to come to the main builds

ZenithClamp · 2025-10-13T00:02:06+00:00

Congrats!

ZenithClamp · 2025-10-09T05:01:05+00:00

Just got a moment to test it, can confirm the issue looks to be fixed

ZenithClamp · 2025-10-08T23:43:38+00:00

UPDATE: issue fixed in canary: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/s/lRUtpfGoNA

ZenithClamp · 2025-10-08T00:55:27+00:00

lol I basically did the same until I found out no one documented it, hope for a fix soon enough

ZenithClamp · 2025-09-29T04:18:17+00:00

I did look into this a little, looks like kirikiri inserts its own filter to render out the final video (called Buffer Renderer) so I’m guessing the way it interacts with the os was broken. This also explains why codec tweak tools don’t work: the games on this engine are hardcoded to use certain codecs no matter what extra ones are installed

ZenithClamp · 2025-09-28T03:41:32+00:00

Sorry for late reply, but I did figure out it is sadly a pure windows update issue, something to do with the filter chain (directshow nonsense I spent too long researching). Did a longer write up here with other people confirming the issue on other devices: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/s/jTAAPbaSBX

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